


Birches

by bunn



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Definitely book Gimli, Definitely book Legolas, Ents, Friendship, Gen, Mostly Fluff, Storytelling, Third Age, alas for the mortality of trees, birches are not the most longlived of trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 14:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18033599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunn/pseuds/bunn
Summary: Just a dwarf and his elf friend going for a walk in Fangorn Forest after the fall of Sauron.





	Birches

When Gimli had last entered Fangorn Forest, hunting for Merry and Pippin, it had been grey and dim under cloudy March skies. 

Now though, as Legolas led the way merrily into the new Treegarth of Isengard, it was August and the leaves hung long and green overhead. Here and there the summer sun reached golden and dazzlingly bright through gaps in the leaves to illuminate mossy trunks or bathe the curled fronds of ferns in light. They were walking north, near the banks of the young river Isen, and the water ran singing joyfully over the wet rock. 

Gimli looked around suspiciously at all of it, but saw nothing moving; no reaching limbs or grasping roots. Legolas had paused beside a great half-fallen trunk, and was looking back at him with a merry light in his eye. Gimli strode on, determined. 

The land rose steadily as they went on, and soon they came out of the Watchwood, and were climbing up into the land that had been ruined by Saruman and his orcs: a wasteland of stumps, broken twigs and branches. 

Legolas looked at the ruin with obvious distress. “We could turn further East, and come into the heart of the forest more quickly,” Gimli suggested, though he was enjoying the fresh breeze blowing down from the mountains. 

Legolas shook his head. “No, I would rather keep to our course. It’s a grief to see the forest felled so brutally, but already the fireweed and the creeping bind-weed are making a veil across the stumps, and the flowers are fair. In a few years the trees will return.”

“So you want to go on up?”

Legolas nodded. “I had a thought that before we turn east, we might try to visit this ancient kinsman that Treebeard spoke of, this Fladrif.”

“He who fought the orcs, then retreated to the birches of the highest slopes after he was wounded?”

“The very one! Who knows what tales he can tell us, he and his birches of the high slopes? Also you’re happier with mountain-stone beneath your feet, and that would save me a good deal of listening to your grumbling. ” 

“Hmph,” Gimli said, and frowned because Legolas clearly expected him to. “You know I’m no woodsman. I’m here because I gave my word, not for love of trees.” 

Legolas laughed “I had noticed. But forests are not only filled with the great trees of the lowlands. The silver stems of the birches of the heights are fair indeed — fairer, perhaps, even than the columns of pale stone in the Glittering Caves of Aglarond.”

“I find that unlikely,” Gimli said. “But lead on, my friend! Though, I hope you’ve thought about what to do if Fladrif is not as friendly as his lowland kin.” 

“Woodlands are often full of perils,” Legolas said with a fleeting smile, “We’ve weathered a good deal of trouble together by now, after all.” He smiled, and Gimli thought he would go on up the hill then, but instead Legolas turned, with some delight, to a young hazel sapling that had somehow escaped the felling and began to sing to it quietly. Gimli shook his head in affectionate disapproval and sat down to listen. 

 

*****

The last of the sun still shone golden on the mountainside, though far below them, Isengard and the Gap of Rohan were now dim and blue with shadow. They had climbed above the woods that Saruman’s orcs had ruined, to the first of the birch trees on the heights.

Here Gimli declared a halt. “I know you would cheerfully walk on all night, but I need food, a pipe and after that, sleep,” he announced, taking off his pack and putting it down firmly. 

Legolas put his pack next to it. “Food would be welcome, and rest among the trees. Do you not find them fair? Soft green leaves as light as feathers fluttering in the faintest breeze, white bark blushing with the falling sun, and long blue shadows trailing away into the shades of evening.” 

Gimli sat down heavily and looked around at the slender birches. “They aren’t too bad,” he allowed. “I like the shape of that one against the sunset sky, the silhouette is superbly balanced. I could make a lamp of that design, worked in translucent quartz, perhaps. With a flame moving gently behind it, it would look as though the leaves were stirring in the breeze.”

“That would be a fair thing to set within the Glittering Caves.” Legolas sat down next to him and leant against a tree. He looked out west towards the setting sun. “I can see the Sea,” he said. “A line of light just along the western edge of the world... I wonder what lies beyond it.”

Gimli stopped rummaging in his pack for food, and gave his friend a long doubtful look. “Is it calling you again?”

“Oh yes. I hear the music of the Sea on white shores beyond the world. The gulls crying.” Legolas caught his eye and laughed. “Don’t look so worried! I promised Aragorn the aid of the Wood in bringing Minas Tirith back to life: I shall have time enough to think of ships once our work there is done, and that will not be for many long years of Men... or Dwarves.”

“You think your father will not raise objections to our plans to move south?” Gimli asked. He was really wondering if Thranduil might command his son not to sail into the west, but felt disinclined to ask him that in so many words. 

“I doubt it: why should he?” Legolas asked lightly, taking the slab of bread and cheese that Gimli offered him. 

“I’m not so sure what the new King under the Mountain will say to my idea,” Gimli admitted. “The first battle of Dale was fierce, and the second fiercer, I hear. I’m wondering if Thorin Stonehelm will wish to lose still more of his folk to Aglarond and Gondor.”

“He’s hardly losing them,” Legolas said with reassuring confidence. “You wish to seek out new lands, and why should you not? You are not a treasure to be hoarded in a cave. What king could object to his people wandering as they will?”

Gimli looked at him, but for once, Legolas seemed entirely serious, and Gimli knew him well enough by now to know that he was not deliberately seeking to cause offence. “I think when I speak to the King, I’ll not put it quite like that.” he said diplomatically, and took a large bite of bread and cheese. 

 

*****

 

Gimli slept soundly that night, uninterrupted by dreams or alarmingly self-willed trees, and woke, as he usually had lately, to the sound of Legolas singing quietly to himself. 

“No Ents?” he asked. “I wondered if they might come on us in the night.”

Legolas shook his head. “No sign of them. I can hear the trees whispering to one another, but they haven’t spoken to me, not yet. I think that they are grieving.”

“For their fallen...comrades back there?” Gimli jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the wasteland of stumps. 

Legolas shrugged. “Perhaps. Or it may be an older grief: I can’t tell from here, but there’s something about this wood that feels sad. It’s in the movement of the leaves and the whisper of the wind.”

“Well, better sad than angry,” Gimli said philosophically, as he packed away his bedroll. “We might as well go on and get it over with.” 

*****

 

They filled their flasks and left the narrow bubbling stream of the young Isen to wander further into the birch woods. They wandered till near noon, past rocky outcroppings and stretches of purple heather, buzzing with bees between the trees, when Legolas’s head went up, alert. 

Gimli looked at him and raised his eyebrows. Legolas pointed, and Gimli squinted through the trees. For a moment he could see nothing, then as they went closer, he saw that a great near-ruined birch with several broken branches, leaning precariously on another tree that stood straight and tall next to it, was watching them with the strange ancient eyes of Ents. 

His steps faltered, and he glanced up at Legolas, who was regarding the great figure in wonder. 

Probably neither the Ent nor Legolas himself would consider it impolite to stand there regarding one another for several hours, but Gimli was of a hastier mind. 

“Good day, Master Ent!” he said. “I am Gimli son of Glóin of Erebor, and this is my friend Legolas son of Thranduil of the Greenwood.” He bowed politely, then paused to allow the Ent to introduce himself, but he said nothing, and so Gimli went on. “An unlikely friendship between Dwarf and Elf, I know, and we thought the same at first! We have been visiting with your kinsman Fangorn, down away in Isengard where Saruman is now held prisoner in his own tower. Your kinsman gave us his leave to visit these woods on our road home to the North.” 

“Has he?” the Ent said at last, his voice lighter than Treebeard’s voice, and more resonant. “And did old Fangorn send you to me?”

“No,” Legolas said. “I am to blame there. I led Gimli here, for I could hear the sorrow in these woods, and I wondered about it, here among the birches shining in the summer sun. I have a great curiosity about this forest and those who dwell within it. Are you indeed the ancient Ent called Fladrif? Your name is remembered in our songs.”

“Your people called me that, once,” the Ent said. “Skinbark, for my smooth and shining bark.” He laughed, a musical sound that seemed at odds with his appearance. His bark was old, blackened and callused, and cut by the marks of many axes. “That was long ago. The leaves have fallen many times since last I saw elves in the birchwoods. ” 

“I did not know if the Onodrim still lived, or if you had passed long ago into song, until I saw one of your people for the first time outside the walls of the Hornburg,” Legolas told him “They and their Huorns took fierce revenge upon Saruman’s orcs.” 

“Hmmmmm” Fladrif said, and nothing more for just long enough for Gimli to wonder if ancient Ents had a tendency to fall asleep. “Did they?” 

“You didn’t know?” Gimli asked, startled. 

“I heard the call,” Fladrif said. “Word came to me even here that my people marched out to war against the tree-killer of Isengard, and that Isengard had fallen. Too late for many of my trees and tree-herds, yet it makes me glad.”

A long thoughtful pause, and then just as Legolas was about to say something, Fladrif spoke again. 

“But I know nothing of this Hornburg. Where is it?”

Legolas explained, and the old Ent listened, his strange eyes flickering when Legolas spoke of the numbers of the orcs, and of how the Huorns had penned them in the vale, and when Gimli spoke of the stream of the Deeping Coombe, and how orcs had crept like rats beneath the wall. All the while the tall young tree stood beside Fladrif, silent, so far as Gimli could tell, and unmoving. 

“This is a fine lot of news,” Fladrif said, once they had told that part of the tale. Gimli found he enjoyed telling a story with Legolas: he noticed things that Gimli would not have thought of, and at the same time, skipped merrily past matters that seemed to Gimli more important. 

“I shall be thinking on this through winter and into spring.” Fladrif said. “And there is more to the tale, you say?” 

“A good deal more,” Legolas said, “And I should be delighted to tell it to you, if in return you would tell us something of the tale of the Ents and of these high birchwoods.” Gimli regarded him with some alarm. Still, they were only a day’s walk from Isengard. He could return for supplies if the story took more than a week. 

“If you had come to the long green halls of my woods in summers past, I would have offered you hospitality,” Fladrif said. “But not now. I cannot walk down to the springs of Isen any more. Old age, rot and orc-axes together make for savage wounds, and even Ents do not live forever. I stand now with my dear friend beside me, until the day comes when the wild wind blows, and then I shall stand no more.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Gimli said. “We have brought supplies with us, since we expected to make our own way through the woods, so there is no need to be concerned for us. Can we offer you any help? We could fetch water, or bear word back to Isengard that you are here alone and hurt.”

“He is not alone,” Legolas said, glancing around, and Gimli was suddenly very aware of the many tall pale trees around him, and the way their limbs moved and their leaves fluttered in something that was not the wind. 

“No,” Fladrif agreed, and his gnarled mouth smiled. “I am far from alone. I am among friends. And there are still a few tree-herds of my people who pass this way to bring the waters of Isen, now and again. But it would be a joy to me to hear word of the wider world once more, and to tell you of trees now long lost.”

Legolas laughed. “Then we are all well suited — save perhaps Gimli — and after all, Gimli, we have run across Rohan, marched through the Paths of the Dead and to Mordor, fought a number of great battles and then seen a coronation and a wedding, with barely a pause for breath. You can spare a few days to smoke your pipe in peace and swap tales before we hurry North, can you not?”

Gimli considered for a moment the Battle of Dale, his plans for a new gate for Minas Tirith, and the questions he urgently wished to ask of Thorin Stonehelm the king. But  _ elves do not count the running years _ , Legolas had said, and  _ all else fleets by: it is a grief to them _ . 

“That sounds an excellent idea to me,” he said, sitting down comfortably at the foot of a tall birch that was probably not going to drop a branch on his head. From his pack, he took out the small pipe that Pippin had given him, his tinder-box, and a little of the precious pipe-weed. 

**Author's Note:**

> written for Back to Middle-earth Month 2019, for the prompt 'birch': I20 on the card 'Tolkien's Trees'.


End file.
